Currently, the only practical and affordable method to provide local voice telephone service (and associated call management features) is to rent a physical copper circuit from the local telephone company. The copper circuit would connect the-customer premise equipment (CPE) to a central switching office (CO) of a Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). The CO is responsible for hosting the subscriber's public dial number and routing the calls to the subscriber's line when the number is dialled. Additionally, the CO is responsible for providing some call management features such as Caller-ID and Call Waiting type services.
Consequently, there is a need for a system and method for providing local telephone services over an IP based network to mitigate the requirement of renting a copper circuit from a telephone company.